For real health-care reform

Editor’s note: The following guest editorial was written by Dr. John Patrick Reilly, an orthopedic surgeon with a practice in Bay Terrace:

To reach the day when we can have substantive and effective change to our health-care system, we must give the doctors a larger seat at the table.

Why? Because if there is a fundamental concept to agree on and use to move us off-center in this crucial debate, it is that America does provide the best health care, and at the core of our success is the doctor-patient relationship.

That is why my patients, as well as thousands across the country, withdrew support from a bill they either do not understand or they know affects their relationship with the best our health-care system offers — that is, our physicians, nurses and hospital workers.

Our health-care system’s deconstruction, reconstruction and expansion should not be relegated to or contingent upon the vision or agendas of other entities which, at best, have a symbiotic or worse, a parasitic relationship, on that fundamental trust. Governmental agencies are concerned with maintaining bureaucracy; insurance and pharmaceutical companies are focused on corporate profits; and attorneys have created a cottage industry of frivolous malpractice suits.

I have recently interviewed medical students applying for orthopedic surgical residency who informed me they have accumulated over $250,000 of educational debt.

How, in the current climate of decreased revenue, increased costs and an increasingly hostile and adversarial legal climate, can we continue to expect our best and brightest to desire entry and serve in the health-care field?

The solution appears clear, and common sense to all involved.

For the patient — access, affordability, portability and elimination of restriction based on pre-existing conditions.

For the doctor — fair compensation, adequate tort reform, reduction in bureaucratic requirements and allowance for either a deduction or tax credit for uncompensated care.

For the uninsured — provide appropriate avenues to get care by providing increased affordable access to the insurance pool or providing a sufficient safety net for those who truly cannot afford care.

For the taxpayer (that means all of us) — the fundamental here is cost control, which can be facilitated

Insurance competition;

Reduction of waste in bloated government bureaucracies;

Elimination of fraud and abuses;

Tort reform to eliminate frivolous lawsuits estimated to cost $5 billion a year and reduction in the cost of defensive medicine estimated to be over $180 billion annually;

What confidence can we have in giving the government control of one sixth of the U.S. economy when it so poorly managed Medicare, Social Security, the Veterans Administration and the Workers Compensation system? We must do better.

In the end, what we need is more active health-care provider participation in the process and it must be by practicing physicians who have lived the system, not just physician educators or academics who have, for the most part, been absent from the “trenches” of providing health care.

Our patients expect more from physicians than just in the examination room. They now need us to extend our care and protect their interests against a government regulation of their health-care needs.